


Films About Ghosts

by bluestargirl6 (pressdbtwnpages), pressdbtwnpages



Category: Rent - Larson
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2006-07-05
Updated: 2006-07-05
Packaged: 2017-10-15 17:10:31
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 493
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/163013
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/pressdbtwnpages/pseuds/bluestargirl6, https://archiveofourown.org/users/pressdbtwnpages/pseuds/pressdbtwnpages
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p><i>Mark doesn’t know how to get out, doesn’t really want to, only knows that someday he has to, that he should start looking for exits.</i></p>
            </blockquote>





	Films About Ghosts

Mark doesn’t know how he’s going to let this go. Life in the loft, life with Roger, Collins, and Maureen, it hasn’t always been easy. It hasn’t been all good times. There’s been plenty of blood and tears and anger.

But that’s what makes it hard to let go. Because in spite of it all, he loves them. Mark’s friends are his family. The loft is his home. And he knows that he is going to have to grow up some day. Get a real job, meet some girl who is great but doesn’t quite mesh with this lifes. And he’s going to have to choose her, choose life over memories and possibilities and things that will never replicate quite right, never be the same.

He’s put being an adult off for a good long time, but ultimately it’s against his nature. Mark likes bedtimes, square meals, heat, sure, and he really likes friends who are alive. Friends who remember to take their AZT. He doesn’t want to write them off, doesn’t want to be waiting for Roger to die so he can finally get a life. Doesn’t want to resent his best friend. It was hard enough watching Angel dwindle away, watching Mimi. He can’t imagine losing Roger, and even more terrifying as if that’s possible, being alone. Mark knows his mission is to be the witness, to observe, to chart the highs and lows of his friends’ lives. It’s what he’s good at, what he is meant to do, but that doesn’t mean he likes it. Doesn’t make it easy.

Roger’s never understood that. Never really seen survival as a burden. Death, yes, running out of time scares Roger. He’s in a rush to find glory, has never thought about the agonizing day-to-day isolation of outliving your friends. Sometimes Roger’s obstinate determination to keep Mark safe makes Mark feel kamikaze. Makes him not care about AIDS or car crashes, makes him want to leap without looking.

And Mark doesn’t know how to get out, how to leave the loft and this life, doesn’t really want to, only knows that someday he has to, that he should start looking for exits now. Because he can see himself here in 20 years, sitting in this same window ledge, hunched over with a full beard and talking to himself, pretending that the lights of the city are stars. Okay, blue stars, but stars. Maybe Roger will still be around, maybe not. And Collins. And Maureen and Joanne, though he bets that they will have found greener pastures by then. And kids and lives. They’ll be in their forties, and that’s never seemed older to Mark than it does right now.

He’s felt old plenty of nights. Exhausted by the needs and whims of his friends, of being their rock and his own. He’s felt burned out, feared burning out, but never so much as when he pictures himself here alone, grasping at ghost memories.


End file.
